Toronto is the Fastest Growing Tech Market in North America

Toronto has been named the fastest growing tech market in North America by the CBRE’s 2017 North American Scoring Tech Talent report. The city even beat out the technology hotbeds of San Francisco and New York City combined, shooting up from 12th to sixth in an overall annual ranking.

From 2015 to 2016, Toronto added 22,500 new technology jobs, compared to 5,370 for New York and 11,540 for San Francisco.

Toronto also ranked as the second-cheapest market with high quality talent for a technology firm to operate. When you consider the costs of hiring talent and finding real estate, it costs about $26 million (all figures USD) to run a 500 person technology company in Toronto, well below the lowest US city’s cost for the same thing, $34 million in Oklahoma City.

“Toronto is a becoming a leader in producing a world-class tech talent, particularly in the artificial intelligence field,” said Werner Dietl, Executive VP of CBRE Canada in a release. “It shows just how vibrant Toronto’s tech industry has become.”

Toronto has a total of 212,000 technology workers, a 32 per cent increase over the last five years. Eight per cent of all workers in the city are in technology, an improvement from the 6.9 per cent last year.

“Regardless of currency differences, Toronto remains comparatively cheap for both talent and real estate costs when compared to major markets,” added Dietl. “Not only are we a cheaper market to operate in, Toronto also provides international firms access to both the city’s high-quality talent pool and Canada’s immigration policies that allow them to recruit and bring over the best talent from around the world.”